Social Anxiety to Social Confidence

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Audio Transcript

“We’re over two weeks into the New Year and I’m willing to bet that a lot of you have made a new year’s resolution to make some progress with overcoming your social anxiety. So how’s it going and what plans do you have? I really hope that it is going well for you and that you have a great plan in place that works, but I know that many of you will be struggling with knowing what path to take, so in this blog entry I wanted to offer a little direction for those who are seeking it.

Over the years I’ve spoken to a lot of people about their plans for overcoming their social anxiety and there is one type of response that crops up time and time again. It is usually along the lines of ‘I am going to go out and be more socially active’, or ‘I am going to face the situations I find difficult’, or maybe that, they are going to go out and meet more people. There is nothing wrong with these goals at all, but people nearly always do not fulfil them, because they are their only goal. Year after year thousands of people with social anxiety aim for this same type of goals without success because their goal do not include learning anything new or making any changes within themselves. Effectively they are doing that age old thing of trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Some people actually do experience different results by doing this, but unfortunately it is usually their social anxiety getting worse rather than better. The repeated perceived failures that build up as they try to go into more and more social situations while still feeling just as anxious as before add up, lowering their self-esteem and therefore leaving them feeling more vulnerable and more anxious than ever. Don’t let this happen to you, be different! Do be more socially active if that is what you want to do, but back up your plan with other changes that will help you benefit from it fully.

If your goal is to be more socially active to overcome your social anxiety then the reasoning behind it is probably that, by facing your fears you will overcome them, just as if someone with a water phobia keeps getting in the swimming pool, then they will start to learn that being in the water is not dangerous and that they can handle it. This kind of ‘facing your fears’ strategy can actually work for social anxiety, but the problem is that people are often just too scared to face the situations they find difficult, or that when they do face them, they are not facing them fully because they are still using subtle avoidance tactics. For example, if you find you get very anxious at parties, so try to address this by going to lots of parties, but still avoid talking to people, or you drink alcohol to boost your confidence or only stick to safe topics when talking to people then you are not actually facing your fears and will not benefit from the process. This is because parties are not what you’re afraid of, so being in them doesn’t make any difference. What you’re actually afraid of is probably something like opening up to people or allowing people to get to know you. Just putting yourself in the party situation is not enough and can actually make your anxiety worse because it reinforces your feelings of inadequacy when you don’t make progress.

For most people, they are going to need to do more than just facing the situations they find difficult. Most likely they will need to work on changing the way they think about themselves and other people so they can have the courage to face their fears, and also change how they behave in response to their anxious feelings and challenging situations so they are actually facing their fears fully. The changes that need to be made are not always immediately obvious, so some investigation, experimentation and learning will be required by you. I’d really encourage you to take the time to learn more about how your social anxiety works and what else you might need to do to successfully increase your social confidence other than just facing your fears. Take advantage of the growing collection of information available on social anxiety and make sure that when you face your fears you are prepared, and know what changes you need to be making. Don’t expect to get it all perfect first time. Change if often difficult at first, but if you are persistent then it can be surprising how quickly things can get better. If you keep going, keep seeking new answers and keep making changes, step by step you will achieve the social confidence you desire.”